Is Your Headline Missing The Two Most Important Words?

Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 6:21 pm

How to tweak your headlines and possibly pull in thousands extra in sales.

I just launched a new product. If you want to refer to the sales letter as you read this article, it’s at:
http://www.kerriesheehan.com/thewriterssecret

I made a mistake on the product title and headline and quickly fixed it by changing just TWO WORDS.

I want to share these two words with you. Because maybe YOUR headlines are missing these two words.

Let me explain.

First of all, if you’re new to all this, your headline is the most important part of your sales page because it’s the ad for the ad.

It determines whether or not the people who land on your web page read anything else or immediately bounce. If you get it wrong, you can kill your sales.

In fact, Michael Masterson says 80% of your sales are the result of your headline and lead. The lead is the opening of your sales letter.

Your headline needs to accomplish multiple objectives.

1. Get the message across that your product isn’t the same old, same old.

In marketing we call this the USP or Unique Selling Proposition. It’s a bit of a challenge to do this in extremely over-marketed markets like Internet marketing.

People have pretty much seen it all and heard it all. So you really have to put some brainpower into finding a unique angle.

2. Get across specifics

In general, specifics outpull generalities. They sound more believable.

3. Communicate a crystal clear benefit or wifm — what’s in it
for me.

Now, if you leave OUT any of those elements, you can wreck your results.

Change just a few words and you can spike your results.

My pal Daegan Smith is one of my “go to” guys when I need to change or tweak a marketing process. You may have heard my interview with Daegan in Promo Dashboard. If you didn’t, and you have the product, you’ll find his interview on the “bonuses” tab.

Great, great interview.

So anyway, as you hopefully know, I launched a new product this week. When I say launched, I mean to my own list. I haven’t even rolled it out to affiliates yet.

I wanted to make sure I had my letter tweaked and selling before I gave my affiliates the opportunity to tell their folks about it.

I try to treat my affiliates right. The same way I’d want to be treated.

My letter wasn’t converting as good as I wanted. And we’d had technical issues on the launch due to installing a new upsell script and a few other things. Normally, things run like clockwork. But Murphy (Murphy’s law) decided to pay us a visit.

So my copywriting brain wasn’t running at full speed. I decided to use my “lifeline” option and call Daegan. My other lifeline “go to” guy is Jason Fadlien or “Flads” as my pal Jit and I call him. But Flads was nowhere to be found.

Lucky me, I had Daegan on the horn.

“Daegan, dog, what do you think of this headline?”

The headline originally read:

////////////////////////////////
Secrets of Making GGGGGGG
Anyplace Anytime Anywhere
Just By Writing On Your Laptop
And Selling Your Words
Over and Over and Over Again!
////////////////////////////////

The word “money” goes where the G’s are. I had to do that to prevent this ezine from getting filtered to your forbidden box.

Anyway, that headline converted pretty mediocre. You’ll notice there’s not a strong uniqueness about it. The uniqueness was in the product title: “The Writer’s Secret.”

I felt that was a bit of an angle or idea people hadn’t heard before.

But when it didn’t convert as I wanted, I changed it to:

////////////////////////////////////////
On December 3, 1998, I Discovered A
“Cookie Cutter” Secret That I’ve
Repeated 122 Times — And You Can
Use This Same Secret Starting
2 Hours and 58 Minutes From Right Now!
////////////////////////////////////////

I added specifics with the date and numbers. This sometimes helps. And I changed the concept a bit.

But it still wasn’t rocking and rolling dollars into my account the way I wanted. Sales weren’t just pouring in. They were coming in but a bit slow for my tastes.

So I used my lifeline and called Daegan. Or maybe he called me. I think he called me.

Anyway, Daegan shared with me how he already has his membership site up to doing 70 g’s a month and he doesn’t even have his OTO (one time offers” in place yet.

That boy can do pay-per-click and media buying like nobody’s business. He’s just very thorough and systematic about sticking to his guns.

My thing is the affiliate program. We’re on different marketing models. But the same basics apply.

Anyway, Daegan said, “Marlon, I saw your email but I read the title ‘The Writer’s Secret’ and I thought ‘Even though I write every day, I don’t want tips on how to write.’”

Of course, the product is NOT about how to write. It’s about the exact model and system I’ve used since December 3, 1998 to bring in money every month, month in and month out to the tune of millions of dollars.

With small tweaks and differences, I’ve used pretty much the same formula. I’ve added a few things to the mix and had to modify a part here or there. But it’s an evergreen formula that has stood the test of time.

I IMMEDIATELY saw what Daegan was talking about.

He said, “Your headline doesn’t give me a benefit. So what if it’s a cookie cutter system? What will it do for me?”

I said, “Dog, I get it. I see it.” He fired back, “If I’m giving copy advice to the great Marlon Sanders, I must be getting pretty good at this.”

“Yeah, dog, you are,” I spit back.

You got to understand…I’m a copywriter by trade. And a darned good one. But I don’t write for clients anymore. I do my thing and that’s it.

Last year, I only produced one major product and several webinars. So I’m out of practice in writing sales letters. I’m rusty. And actually, this is one of the huge insights I got that allowed me to articulate the concepts in “The Writer’s Secret.”

You know, any idiot can write things and make them complex. It takes a lot of distilling, practice, mistakes and “boiling down” to get just to the heart of something.

And say, “forget all the other noise, and just focus on THESE few things.” It’s the 80/20 rule where 20% of the things get you 80% of the results. But you gotta know what those 20% of things are.

I obviously know to have the WIFM (what’s in it for me) in the headline. To have the big benefit in there.

But we had so many other factors in motion…moving servers…installing a new affiliate software…all these other factors in motion that I just couldn’t focus in on the sales letter.

When Daegan said that, I saw it immediately.

“Yeah dog, I get it,” I fired back to him. Then, to repay him for his great insight, I explained to him my theory of “selling around the edges.” A concept I’ve never heard anyone talk about. I try to always give back the same or more to others than they give me.

Then, after getting off the phone, I read over the headline and said, “How can I get THE BENEFIT in here?”

You need to be asking the SAME questions about your headline.

1. Does it project a unique idea that doesn’t sound like the same old, same old?

2. Does it CONFUSE people?

In my case, “The Writer’s Secret” wasn’t the best title. It makes it sound like it’s a product about how to write. So what could I say to change that perception in the headline?

I scratched my head a bit.

3. Does it convey a crystal clear benefit?

I re-read my headline. I’d just finished watching the Frank Kern video thingy he sent out. Frank is fond of using this term called “money getting.” He’s the first person I heard use it and really, it’s one heck of a phrase.

The reason I say that is that what MOST people do is use numbers or claims that really push a gray line legally. I try to be very conservative legally.

So I refuse to put blatant money claims in headlines and do the things most marketers do. I’ve been around this Game 10X longer than most. And that’s why I’m conservative.

The money isn’t yours if you don’t get to keep it because the gov’t takes it away.

This also puts me at a bit of a disadvantage. I won’t say the things others say. I have to imply or hint or communicate a desirable benefit without being blatant about it.

Here is the headline I needed to tweak:

I zeroed in on those two words “cookie cutter.” There really isn’t a clear benefit. I like the term. But what’s the benefit of a cookie cutter? By implication it’s something you repeat over and over.

But what’s the benefit of THAT?

Obviously it’s that you GET money. Enter Frank Kern.

I replaced those two words with “Money Getting” The new headline became:

Now, I could have used many other words or ideas there. That’s just what I came up with on the spur of the moment. And it immediately and dramatically increased sales.

The POINT of this is NOT to use those exact two words. If that’s what you think, you totally and completely miss the point of what I’m writing about.

The two words are NOT “money getting” The two words ARE whatever the BIG BENEFIT for your buyer.

These are the two magic words: “big benefit”

The wifm has gotta be in your headline and gotta be crystal clear.

Here’s the point:

1. Does your headline spell out a crystal clear WIFM for the reader?

2. Is there an element of uniqueness to your headline, so it doesn’t sound like the same old, same old? In other words, do you have any sort of USP (Unique Selling Proposition) in it?

3. Does your headline or product title CONFUSE the reader?

You can see what the new headline looks like at:

http://www.marlonsanders.com/writerssecret

Now, if you clicked on that link more than 48 hours ago, you’ll see a different headline because I have a special “limited time offer” script set up so I can automatically remove bonuses.

I forget to remove bonuses or change things. So I’m automating it now. I’m going to add a bonus to Writer’s Secret that explains what this script is and how to use it.

The OTHER thing I did to my sales letter was re-wrote the LEAD or opening paragraphs to clarify a bit what the Writer’s Secret was about. To make it clear it wasn’t “how to write” but that it was about “money getting” or basically my exact formula for making a living online that I’ve done at least 122X since December 3, 1998.

If you read the letter, you’ll see 3 things:

1. Benefit — Money getting strategy

2. Proof — Used 122x since December 3, 1998

3. Uniqueness — Not what others are teaching

You’ll see those themes repeated multiple times in the headline and the body copy.

I plan on releasing this to affiliates next week now that it’s tweaked. I hope this inside look at the headline tweaks gives you ideas about how to tweak your own headlines and sales letters.

Marlon Sanders
The King of Step-By-Step Internet Marketing and “The Ambassador of Old School Marketing”

=======================================================
Marlon Sanders helps people with hopes and dreams figure out how to turn those into reality by selling stuff on
the Internet. http://www.kerriesheehan.com/thewriterssecret

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